Split the Shroud
by Octoblink
Summary: On Tatooine, a fugitive ex-Jedi and a desert farmer discuss treason and childrearing. Lately, the two are synonymous. (Post-ROTS)


_Sky— what a scowl of cloud_  
 _till near and far_  
 _ray on ray split the shroud:_  
 _splendid: a star!_

* * *

There's a hush to the desert at twilight, when the wind subsides into gusts that skim the ridges of the dunes. It's always been a comforting time for Beru: after the day's work is done, but before darkness swallows up the land. As a girl, she used to linger outdoors as long as she could, watching the suns sink towards the horizon and listening to the quiet hum of moisture vaporators, until it was finally time to shutter the windows and lock the doors for the night.

Tonight, Tatooine is awash in red. It's the clouds, Beru thinks. They hang heavy around the horizon, casting the sunlight in a fiery glow.

She makes her way up the ragged edges of the dune. Her husband stands at the top of the ridge, gazing westward to the canyons. He's watching the sky; she's watching the play of crimson light and shadow across his pensive face.

"Clouds at sunsdown," observes Beru. "When I was a girl, we'd call that good luck."

Owen glances at the clouds as if seeing them for the first time. He frowns. "They'll have gone by morning. It's too early for the damp season to start."

"Maybe," she allows.

Still, the clouds don't fade, even as the first sun dips to only the faintest ruby gleam on the horizon. Auspicious, maybe—or uncanny. Owen's right; it's too early for heavy clouds. It's been months since so many clouds gathered so darkly in the Tatooine sky. Now they return with a sudden fervor, carrying whispers of upheaval in the galaxy.

Like an old relic stuffed in a closet and forgotten, Tatooine has existed on the fringe of known space, edging steadily toward obscurity and collapse. Ignored by the Republic, exploited by the Hutts, populated by criminals and slavers and honest folk working their fingers to the bone. What care had anyone for the polished politicians and self-righteous wars of the Republic? It could never reach them, would never make any difference in their lives.

But now it has, and Beru isn't sure what to think.

A distant wail shatters the night.

Beru turns; Owen doesn't. He stares fixedly at the horizon, mouth flat and arms folded over his chest. She knows that look. It's the expression he wears when he's done haggling, and no force of storm or wind can make him budge again.

"I'll go," she says.

She leaves his side, clambers down from the sandy ridge, carefully tugging the hem of her skirts out of the way. At first, she can't see anything, even with a hand raised to block the suns' glare. The sand seems one ocean of rusty brown, shifting uneasily in the wind.

Then she spots him: a hooded figure hunched over an eopie. He winds his way through the dunes towards the farmstead. Cloaked in shades of brown, he seems almost to fade away into the sand.

The wail grows louder as the rider draws near, rising and falling fitfully. Once, when it threatens to break into a scream, the man shifts his grasp on the bundle under his cloak. A few seconds later, the sound subsides again.

"He's here," Beru says, needlessly. Her husband is a stubborn man.

The eopie halts, bucking restlessly as its rider dismounts. The man pushes back his hood, revealing a fair-skinned face knotted with weariness. His beard is trimmed neatly, fair hair peppered with gray. A fringe of over-long hair shadows his pale eyes. It's hard to guess his age—his skin is lined with creases of exhaustion and pain.

Beru has never met him in person before. She's never spoken with him. But she—like most of the galaxy—knows the Jedi's face.

 _The Negotiator,_ they used to call him. Lately, though, it's been _Traitor._

In his arms, the bundle squirms and lets out another plaintive cry. He adjusts his grip with the dexterity of long repetition. "Hush," he says hoarsely. "Hush, Luke."

He rests his hand briefly on the baby's head, eyes fluttering shut in concentration. The scream hiccups, fades, then quiets to discontented mewling. Only then does the cloaked man glance up to regard Beru with cloud-grey eyes.

"You're Beru Whitesun?"

"Lars, now," she corrects; then hesitates. Kenobi is a general of an army that no longer exists. He's a master of a fallen religion. Eventually, she offers, "Obi-Wan Kenobi?"

He shakes his head, looking slightly pained. "Ben. It's safer."

"May I?"

"Yes. Of course." Gingerly, he presses the swaddled infant into her arms. Beru holds him cautiously. As an older sister of four, she isn't inexperienced with babies. But there's something so small and fragile and precious about this one—about _Luke_ —that it takes her breath away. He gazes up at her with eyes as blue as the morning sky.

It jars her, so strikingly familiar. She'd met Owen's stepbrother only once, years ago. Skywalker had been a tall young man, with fairer hair and skin than his mother—she supposed he took after his father. Everything about him had seemed alien: his dark robes, his leonine poise, the saber hilt strapped to his belt. All around him, static had gripped the air like the calm before a sandstorm.

He was nothing like Shmi. Cliegg's second wife had been a quiet woman, but strong in spirit. Like desert stone, worn away by a thousand sandstorms, refusing to crumble. Her smile had been warm; her eyes pensive. She was born of Tatooine, blood and bone.

Skywalker might have been born a desert slave—that's what Owen had told her, anyway—but he had no more belonged on Tatooine that she did on Coruscant.

Luke blinks sleepily up at the sky, and Beru thinks for a moment that she sees constellations reflected in his eyes.

"He looks so much like his father."

Kenobi closes his eyes, a host of unreadable expressions flitting across his face, and Beru regrets her thoughtlessness almost immediately. For Owen, Skywalker had been a brother by only the barest technicality. But Kenobi had raised the boy from childhood, taught him, loved him like family, and just recently had buried him.

She sighs. "I'm sorry. That was cruel to say."

His face flits back into impassivity so smoothly she nearly doesn't see it happen. Jedi were good at that sort of lying, she'd heard, but it's uncanny to see it for herself. "No harm done. He does take after Anakin quite a bit."

 _Anakin_. Owen rarely used his brother's name; Beru had almost forgotten he had one.

She pauses for a moment, staring down at the baby's pinched face. "Do you think—do you suppose he'll be _very_ like his father?"

"Luke is strong in the Force," Kenobi says with certainty, as if this should be as obvious to her as the baby's blue eyes and snub nose. "Given time, he'll grow stronger."

She wonders what in the world he means by "stronger", and what it'll mean for her and Owen. Jedi aren't much more than legend on Tatooine. Now that they're gone, they'll likely be forgotten altogether. She's heard stories of their... _gifts_ , wildly exaggerated from one cantina spacer to another. She'd never wondered how much of those tales were fiction; she'd never thought she would have to.

 _Gone_. The idea still seems nonsensical. The Jedi, the Republic—those things had been little more than a footnote for life on Tatooine. But even as distant, intangible concepts, they had remained constant for thousands upon thousands of years. And now, to vanish in a matter of days? So much to say one sun might rise without the other.

"Will you train him?" she asks, looking up at the Jedi keenly. "Is that your intention?"

"I gave your husband my word that I wouldn't interfere."

Beru knows that much already. She isn't likely to forget the cold, bleak look on Owen's face as he told her.

There was no choice, that much was clear. It's the Tatooine way to look out for your family, because odds are your family are the only people who'll look out for you. You share your water in drought, protect them from slavers, and take in their children when they die. And family is immutable—even for estranged Jedi stepbrothers. Owen doesn't have to like it, but he'll do his duty.

But some things, he won't budge on. Skywalker was anathema to Owen's entire existence. They repelled each other by nature, like oil and water, irreconcilably divided. Luke was family as Shmi was family, and blood couldn't be denied; but all the same Beru knows Owen dreads the encroachment of the Jedi into their lives.

In that, he is unrelenting. His treason will be on his own terms.

"That isn't what I asked," Beru says.

"No. I won't train him."

The conviction in his voice surprises her. "So easily?"

"Luke's in enough danger as it is; the less contact I have with him—and you—the safer you'll be. Training him as a Jedi in the traditional way would be like shoving him into the Emperor's crosshairs myself. Your family deserves better than that."

 _Your family_.

Kenobi must have no family, she realizes, and the thought boggles her for a moment. No parents, no siblings, no children. His closest friends are dead or scattered, surely, and his student, the closest thing he might have had to a son or a brother, is gone. All that's left behind from that carnage is Luke—and Kenobi is giving him up.

Perhaps he doesn't see it that way. Kenobi is a Jedi, after all, not from Tatooine. They aren't meant to care for outsiders. But she remembers Skywalker's ferocious desperation to find his mother, the fervor that pulled him back to Tatooine. Love is never easy to control.

"How can you give him to us so easily?" she says wonderingly. "How can you trust us?"

For the first time, his eyes fall to the side. "I—I had considered taking him with me, if you refused. But I'm a fugitive now. The Empire will be ruthless in trying to kill me. Luke's safety lies in the fact that I concealed his birth; I can't risk him falling under scrutiny." His mouth twists into a wry smile. "Fleeing from assassins, raised by a traitor? That's no life for a child."

 _Luke will be raised by traitors_ , Beru thinks. _He just won't know it._

"We're his family," she promises him, swayed by sympathy. "We'll look after him."

He closes his eyes. "Thank you."

Beru swallows, tracing the chubby outline of Luke's face with one finger. "And his mother? Owen said she—"

Once more, a shadow crosses his countenance. "Just after he was born," he says heavily. "I was with her when she passed. She was... she was a dear friend, a remarkable woman. You can tell Luke that much, at least."

The need for secrecy is pressing. Even from Luke—especially from Luke, at least until he's old enough to share in the weight of their treason. He can't let slip what he doesn't know, and Owen will tolerate no word of the Jedi in their home. Still, it seems unbearably cruel at times. Beru tips her head in a nod. "Childbirth, then?"

He doesn't answer for a long moment. "Perhaps."

A small hand reaches out from the shroud of the blanket, uncoordinated and clumsy. Beru looks down with a surge of warmth, and gives Luke her little finger to hold. He makes a gurgling sound and tilts his face into her dress.

"I suppose he's hungry," she says amusedly.

"And tired," confirms Kenobi. "He slept for a time while we were in hyperspace, but that was four hours ago at least."

Privately, Beru wonders when _Kenobi_ last slept. From the dark circles under his eyes, she'd guess a few days at least. But his eyes are sharp and his stance is solid, as if he's used to fighting through exhaustion.

"Where will you stay?"

Her own question surprises her, and it seems to startle Kenobi as well. "Onplanet. It's better for us both if you don't know exactly where; I have the dubious privilege of being the most wanted man in the galaxy, you know." He smiles wryly. "Don't worry. I'll be able to find you if you need me."

The thought would make Owen bristle. Beru just nods.

She feels Luke tug on her finger. He gnaws on it toothlessly for a moment, then begins to suckle it like a pacifier. Her heart lightens. "I suppose I'd better get him some supper."

Kenobi nods, glancing down at Luke. "Of course."

"Would you—did you want to say goodbye?"

His smile only lasts a moment, but in that moment Kenobi looks fond, warm, and some twenty years younger. He reaches out a hand, lightly touches Luke's forehead. "Be good to your aunt and uncle, Luke," he murmurs. "And may the Force be with you."

Kenobi turns abruptly then, pulling his hood down over his eyes. There's little need for the gesture—the suns are fading fast. He mounts his eopie with an ease belying his years, touches the reins, and sets out on the long, plodding journey across the desert without looking back.

Into the desert, not back to Anchorhead. Even for a veteran, even for a Jedi, those lands are a harsh subsistence. Hiding there, the barren wilderness of an uncivilized world, is the limit of extreme necessity. Yet perhaps also the safest option, if the Empire is as unrelenting as he believes.

Beru tucks Luke securely under her arm and trudges back towards Owen. He's still standing afield on the sandy ridge, watching the sunset with a steely eye. Her husband is headstrong in the most peculiar ways—a trait, she supposed, that he shared with his stepbrother once upon a time. The child in her arms is proof of that.

"His name is Luke," she says, smiling. "Luke Skywalker."

Owen's mouth twists, and she wonders whether he's thinking of Shmi, or Anakin, or both. "Make a damn sight more sense to call him a Lars."

It would. But Beru remembers how Shmi never took Cliegg's name when they married. She believed her son would come find her, and she refused to be someone else when he did.

So she only says, "Mind your language, dear."

This makes him laugh, as it was meant to. Some of the stoniness in his expression fades, and he peers down at the baby with interest. "He's a small one."

"He'll grow," she says with conviction. "Now come inside, and let's have supper."


End file.
